Jones, Bryan D. 1944-

(Bryan Davidson Jones)

PERSONAL: Born August 6, 1944, in Tuscaloosa, AL; son of C. Glenn (a newspaper publisher) and M. Katherine Jones; married Diane L. Carlson (a university instructor), August 31, 1968; children: Laura. Education: University of Alabama, B.A.; University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D.; also attended University of Michigan.

ADDRESSES: Home—Seattle, WA. Office—Department of Political Science, University of Washington, 101 Gowen Hall, Box 353530, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail—bdjones@u.washington.edu.

CAREER: University of Houston, Houston, TX, assistant professor of political science, 1970-71; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 1972-85, began as assistant professor, became professor of political science and chair of department; Texas A&M University, College Station, professor of political science and head of department, 1985-96, Puryear Professor of Liberal Arts, 1991; University of Washington, Seattle, Donald R. Matthews Distinguished Professor of American Politics and director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, 1996—; writer.

MEMBER: American Political Science Association (president of urban section, 1990-91), Southern Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

Service Delivery in the City, Longman (New York, NY), 1980.

Governing Urban America, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1983.

Governing Buildings and Building Government: A New Perspective on the Old Party, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1985.

(With Lynn W. Bachelor and Carter Wilson) The Sustaining Hand: Community Leadership and Corporate Power, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 1986, 2nd edition, 1993.

(Editor) Leadership and Politics: New Perspectives in Political Science, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 1989.

(With Frank R. Baumgartner) Agendas and Instability in American Politics, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1993.

Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1994.

(Editor) The New American Politics: Reflections on Political Change and the Clinton Administration, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1995.

Politics and the Architecture of Choice: Bounded Rationality and Governance, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

(Editor, with Frank R. Baumgartner) Policy Dynamics, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2002.

(With Frank R. Baumgartner) The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

(With Walter Williams) The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America, Pearson Longman (New York, NY), 2008.

Member of editorial board, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Administration and Society, and Economic Development Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Bryan D. Jones was educated at the University of Alabama and the University of Texas at Austin. A writer and educator, he has taught at several universities, including the University of Houston, Wayne State University, and Texas A&M, prior to taking a position on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle, where he has served as the Donald R. Matthews Distinguished Professor of American Politics and the director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy since 1996. His primary areas of interest are American public policy and the political decision-making process, and he has written and/or edited several books on the subject.

Agendas and Instability in American Politics, which Jones wrote with Frank R. Baumgartner, addresses the ways that public policies are formed, and how the incrementalism of the process rarely matches the actualities of the laws developed. Christopher J. Bosso, in a review for American Political Science Review, called the work “one of the more important books in years, a powerful and well-supported rejoinder to narrowly mechanistic and deterministic policy models. It reminds us that ideas, institutions, and (yes) politics all matter.”

In Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy, Jones takes a look at the potential use of psychology in the development of public policy and the way American political decisions are made. He addresses the contradictions in the constant changes in public policy when the desires and needs of the people and their government representatives remain fairly stable, as well as what he perceives to be the psychological reasons for them. Reviewing for Political Science Quarterly, Forrest Maltzman called Jones’s book “one of those few pieces of scholarship that has the potential to change the way we look at politics.”

The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems, again written with Baumgartner, discusses the ways in which issues become a priority for government bodies, particularly in relation to the development of public policy, and how the flow of information on any given subject can affect these choices. John C. Scott, writing for Social Forces, remarked: “This work is a commendable and important work at several levels, not least of which is the variety and scope of data used in support of the authors’ arguments.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, September, 1994, Christopher J. Bosso, review of Agendas and Instability in American Politics, p. 752.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 1995, Forrest Maltzman, review of Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy, p. 463.

Social Forces, December, 2006, John C. Scott, review of The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems, p. 1042.*